Waste glass is collected in Germany in publicly situated barrels in particular. A preselection is made in that waste glass of a specific color is only to be thrown into a specific barrel in each case. The public complies with this to a greater or lesser extent. A strict separation according to color of the glass is not achievable in this way, of course.
Waste glass consists of bottles in particular, but also can-shaped glass articles. In any case, the waste glass is afflicted with strong contamination. This includes residues of container contents, metal parts such as bottle caps, and plastic parts. Stickers such as labels are particularly unpleasant.
All of these contaminants must be removed in the course of the processing (recycling) of waste glass. The invention is concerned therewith.
The process for processing waste glass or broken glass of any type includes numerous method steps. These include, inter alia, the crushing of the glass thrown into the barrels into shards or particles. These may be the size of the palm of a hand, for example.
A further decisive method step is the separation of the glass particles into the various color fractions. The glass particles and their color are detected in the traps by optical sensors, and the measurement result controls blowing nozzles connected downstream, which in turn react selectively to the individual colors and reject incorrect colors.
Residues of stickers such as labels which adhere to the glass shards interfere in this case. Therefore, a corresponding method step for removing the stickers is connected upstream from the mentioned separation according to color. The invention is directed to this method step.
Facilities for removing the residues of stickers are known. A trough is filled with particles of waste glass. The trough contains stirrers, which revolve in the mass of the particles. The revolving results in mutual friction of the individual particles, the residues of stickers also being detached more or less well from the particles, so that they may be removed in a following step. It is known that the removal of the stickers functions better if the glass shards are as damp as possible. However, the known method is inadequate under various aspects. The stirrers are subject to a high degree of wear. The separation of the residues of the stickers from the glass particles is only incomplete.